Android code shifts media jobs to Ceva

SAN JOSE, Calif. Ė DSP designer Ceva Inc. has announced software for the Android operating system that offloads media tasks from a CPU or GPU to its cores. Ceva claims its Android Multimedia Framework (AMF) cuts power consumption significantly across a range of audio, video and imaging tasks.

AMF enables five- to eight-fold less power use for some audio and voice apps running on TeakLite-4 compared with ARM. Some imaging and video applications run with ten- to 20-fold less power on a MM3101 compared with an ARM and Neon GPU using AMF, Ceva claims.

Top tier app-processor vendors such as Qualcomm may be using techniques similar to AMF to accelerate jobs on their SoCs. However no open-source code currently exists to match the AMF features, Ceva said.

AMF consists of Ceva drivers and protocols running on a host CPU under Android and on its Ceva DSPs with an RTOS. It also requires OpenMAX IL software components in an OpenCore/Stagefright environment to capture threads and tunnel them to the DSP using memory shared by the CPU and DSP cores.

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AMF requires an RTOS and other Ceva and third-party software components.

Sensory validated AMF for voice activation jobs on TeakLite-4, and EyeSight validated it for gesture recognition on the MM3101 core. The code has not yet appeared in production systems but is being integrated into several customer products for an undisclosed fee, Ceva said.

Ceva and others hope Google adopts such techniques in future generations of Android such as the next iteration, Key Lime Pie.